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Read SHARK export files (tab- or semicolon-delimited, plain text or zipped)

Source: R/shark_read.R
read_shark.Rd

Reads tab- or semicolon-delimited SHARK export files with standardized format. The function can handle plain text files (.txt) or zip archives (.zip) containing a file named shark_data.txt. It automatically detects and converts column types and can optionally coerce the "value" column to numeric. The "sample_date" column is converted to Date if it exists.

Usage

read_shark(
  filename,
  delimiters = "point-tab",
  encoding = "utf_8",
  guess_encoding = TRUE,
  value_numeric = TRUE
)

Arguments

filename

Path to the SHARK export file. Can be a .txt or .zip file. If a zip file is provided, it should contain a file named shark_data.txt.

delimiters

Character. Specifies the delimiter used in the file. Options: "point-tab" (tab-separated, default) or "point-semi" (semicolon-separated).

encoding

Character. File encoding. Options: "cp1252", "utf_8", "utf_16", "latin_1". Default is "utf_8". If guess_encoding = TRUE, detected encoding overrides this value.

guess_encoding

Logical. If TRUE (default), automatically detect file encoding. If FALSE, the function uses only the user-specified encoding.

value_numeric

Logical. If TRUE (default), attempts to convert the "value" column to numeric. If FALSE, leaves "value" as-is.

Value

A data frame containing the parsed contents of the SHARK export file, or NULL if the file is empty or could not be read.

Details

This function is robust to file encoding issues. By default (guess_encoding = TRUE), it attempts to automatically detect the file encoding and will use it if it differs from the user-specified encoding. Automatic detection can be disabled.

See also

read_shark_deliv() for reading SHARK Excel delivery files (.xls/.xlsx).

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Read a plain text SHARK export
df_txt <- read_shark("sharkweb_data.txt")

# Read a SHARK export from a zip archive
df_zip <- read_shark("shark_data.zip")

# Read with explicit encoding and do not convert value
df_custom <- read_shark("shark_data.txt",
                        encoding = "latin_1",
                        guess_encoding = FALSE,
                        value_numeric = FALSE)
} # }